


Bearing the will of the flower

by Solshine



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Geralt is an emotionally constipated disaster and he's not valid, Hanahaki Disease, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Illness, M/M, Pining, Whump, cw suffocation, cw vomiting, have you ever seen a man die from poor communication skills, jaskier is a het-leaning bisexual and he's valid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:40:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24841693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solshine/pseuds/Solshine
Summary: The way Jaskier sees it, his hobby of following a witcher around was always pretty likely to get him killed.The fact that it's happening now because the witcher in question doesn't love him, he thinks as he coughs up crumpled flowers, hardly makes a difference.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 110
Kudos: 1483





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Tried to write whump for my favorite whumper, Graintaire, and mostly just succeeded in writing my usual angst turned up to 11. Glad you love it anyway babe!! 😂 Had a grand old time torturing our boy. We must do it again sometime.
> 
> Eternally grateful to my perfect beta reader, robinjoanna, as always, and also to hasty-touch on tumblr for their beautiful and exhaustively sourced floriography spreadsheet at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12SK10SXQWj4lhpkPG9tYbDK69x1JuuZ1ldl8Kh7Z9C8/edit?usp=sharing , enabling gays and our love of Victorian flower language.

“Successful day all round, then,” Jaskier grouses, rubbing at a scratch on his lute with a fingertip. “Ruin my trousers, cripple myself, and on top of all of it there’s this cough that won’t go away.“

“You aren’t crippled,” Geralt says, stirring the little pot of rabbit stew over the fire. “You rolled your ankle.“

Jaskier shifts his injured ankle where it’s propped up on one of the saddlebags and inspects it by the meager light. Is the swelling going down, or getting worse? He coughs unhappily.

“Yes, and a fat lot of good you were about it,” Jaskier accuses. “‘Quit lagging behind, Jaskier!’ ‘What are you moaning about now, Jaskier?’”

“What comes of strumming songs instead of watching out for rabbit holes,“ Geralt fires back, but his brow is furrowed. Well, he _should_ feel bad. Just because Jaskier has a tendency toward drama does _not_ mean that he plays up his injuries. 

Well, not _always._

Geralt spoons some stew into a wooden bowl and circles around the fire to bring it to Jaskier. Which is… sweet, but also only right and fair after he made Jaskier walk over a mile feeling like his foot was about to snap off before Geralt took him seriously. Jaskier accepts the bowl, then sniffs it, frowning.

“Did you put something in this? It smells different.”

Geralt turns back to the fire to spoon up his own bowl.

“Just some extra thyme,” he says. “For your cough.”

Jaskier blinks in surprise at Geralt’s back. His cough? It _has_ been nagging him for a couple days, but he hadn’t even complained about it until just now, long after Geralt had already started the —

His thoughts are interrupted by a sudden, terrible cough, thicker than the one that’s been tickling his throat lately. Rabbit broth sloshes over his hands as his cough frees something from his throat, surprisingly dry and sweet. Jaskier turns around and spits it out over his shoulder into the dirt behind his bedroll.

The firelight is dim enough that at first, he isn’t sure what he’s looking at. When he recognizes it, his throat tightens hard enough to almost set off another round of coughing. 

It is a damp heap of battered, buttery dandelion blossoms. 

He stares at them for a long moment. 

“All right?” says Geralt.

Jaskier looks up quickly.

“Yeah, fine,” he says. “Just scalded my fingers a bit.”

Geralt grunts and goes back to his stew.

Jaskier brushes some dirt quickly over the flowers and stirs his dinner in its wooden bowl, his heart racing.

He knows who it’s for, of course. You don’t get hanahaki disease without knowing who it’s for.

But he won’t tell him.

* * *

It isn’t even that troublesome. The cough stays tickling his throat, but he doesn’t spit out more than a blossom or two every day, coming up almost painlessly and out of Geralt’s sight. Jaskier thanks the gods that he got off fairly easily. He could have years yet, he thinks.

Still, he knows he can’t keep it hidden forever, even apart from the fact that every time Geralt shows him a bit of kindness, grunts a little more gently at him, it gets worse. 

Really, was Jaskier always this pathetic? He feels certain that this must be a recent development. All the more reason to put some distance between them.

They reach a village and Jaskier gives a performance at the tavern, working the room with a wide, charming smile, loud and winsome. He sings all his bawdiest songs, crowd pleasers that have nothing to do with monster hunting, or the monster hunter sitting against the back wall.  
  
Geralt gets an inn room alone. Geralt’s used to that, of course. ( _Or if he isn’t, he’ll have to get used to it soon_ , says a voice in Jaskier’s head. _For one reason or another._ ) The dark-eyed beauty Jaskier rooms with instead thinks the couple of wrinkled blue pansies that tumble from his mouth are beautiful, and does her best to turn his thoughts to happier matters.  
  
In the morning, Jaskier goes on his way.  
  
“I’ve had an invitation to a friend’s manor,” he calls to Geralt, walking away backward down the road. “Lots of fussy people in pretty clothes, you’d hate it. Don’t worry, I’ll check in soon.” He doesn’t give Geralt a chance to argue, not that he would. Jaskier just turns around and goes.  
  
There is no friend and no invitation, of course. But that’s one of the nice things about being welcome wherever you go.  
  
(Almost wherever.)

* * *

  
Between the rising popularity of his songs and his recent affliction, Jaskier is even more popular in high society than he used to be. Not that he wasn’t already, but there’s nothing to draw the attention of a romantic heart like coughing petals into a handkerchief.

“You poor thing,” they simper. “Anyone would be lucky to have you.” He smiles mournfully, glances out the nearest window or into a fireplace, sighs. And then, of course, the one expressing their sympathy endeavors to distract him from his sorrow. 

The nobility especially eat it up. Characters are always dying of hanahaki disease in the novels that rich people like to read, pining themselves into pale shadows on chaise lounges surrounded by rose petals. Jaskier can even sing a couple songs about it, although when he’s asked for them here he laughs and claims not to know any.  
  
The songs and the novels make it sound prettier than it feels. In the day, in the company of others, it’s mostly painless, the now-familiar colorful litter in his handkerchief, a tickle in his throat. 

The rare nights when his bed is unoccupied are sometimes less picturesque. Jaskier lays in the middle of his rucked up sheets, curled around himself and hacking up the perfect circular labyrinths of pink camellia blossoms one after another, gasping for breath, his thin linen shirt damp with sweat. He coughs, and coughs, and the flowers come out slick with spit and more and more battered, the walls of their intricate mazes tumbled down, their secrets out, their monsters free.  
  
With nobody to watch, Jaskier cries, exhausted, and rolls over in bed and goes to sleep. In the morning, he sweeps the flowers into his chamber pot and doesn’t think about it.  
  
It’s an easy and agreeable pattern to fall into. When he feels he’s overstayed his welcome in one manor, there’s another minor lord or lady dragging him by the elbow to another guest room and another dinner party. At the end of a month and a half, he bids farewell to the city and carries on with his traveling, and if his little problem isn’t measurably better, it isn’t any worse. 

He still coughs up camellias late at night. He doesn’t suppose there’s anything for it.

* * *

  
  


Lately he’s set himself up in a river town, a good gig with a steady income at an inn frequented by traders and travelers. He doesn’t even need any new songs with the steady stream of new faces. It’s convenient enough that he’s resisting his itchy feet; it’s not really the thought of dusty roads and crackling campfires that he misses anyway, he knows.

That’s too close to the kind of thoughts he tries to avoid having, and he feels his lungs spasm as he steers his mind away. He takes a gulp of his ale to wash the tickle out of his throat, just as the innkeeper tilts his head at him in that way that means the crowd could use a song.

Jaskier nods, takes one more drink to lubricate the music, and stands.

A couple of the barmaids clap when they see him taking up his lute, and he grins at them. Ladies are much more understanding of dalliance without commitment, it turns out, when your heart is already proven to lie elsewhere. Although as much as he’d enjoyed his time with Melinda, and his time with Agata, his time the other night with both of them at once suggested their own hearts might be spoken for as well. Jaskier picks out the opening notes of an extremely sentimental love song and hopes for the best. He’s not in good practice at that, at hoping, but someone out here deserves love.

Whatever it is Jaskier deserves, it certainly isn’t catching sight of Geralt sitting against the back wall midway through the first chorus.

It’s been six months since he saw Geralt, but the effect is undiminished. He locks eyes with him and gags. He doesn’t get to the end of the line before he‘s fumbling out his handkerchief.

It’s not fast enough.

He chokes on the suppressed cough and shredded, multihued carnations burst from between his pursed lips like damp confetti, the colors of _I missed you_ and _I want you_ and _don’t leave me._ A woman sitting nearby gasps. Jaskier spins away from the audience and tucks his lute clumsily under one arm to hold his handkerchief over his mouth with both hands. The silk square is too small and the flowers too many, and carnation petals tumble from behind its curtain and onto the floor. 

Six months. Is this the only way to delay his fate, then? Can he never see Geralt again without another thready root piercing his lungs?  
  
He’d thought he was doing all right, but suddenly he’s not so sure. Now that they’re in the same room again, Jaskier doesn’t think he can do it, leave Geralt forever for something as paltry as saving his own life. He’s not sure it’d be worth it even if he could.

Jaskier brushes his mouth clean, shoots a reassuring smile at the redheaded gasper who sits with her hands still pressed to her mouth, and dives back into the chorus.

He finishes the song to Melinda bringing him a mug, concern writ across her face. He accepts it with a smile, although the grassy taste of crushed petals in his mouth is not unpleasant, certainly compared to this cat piss of an ale. His throat hurts a little, though.

“Nothing to be concerned about, ladies,” he declares to the room. “There is no more bardic an affliction.” 

The young lady who gasped is making concerned faces at him still, and Jaskier is weighing how exactly to play on her sympathy best when he feels a familiar shadow looming at his elbow.

Geralt of Rivia would never say something as wordy as “can I speak to you outside, please,” when scowling and stomping for the door would do just as well. Jaskier sighs and follows.

“Who is it,” he demands as soon as they’re both out in the orange dusk.

“A pleasure to see you again too, Geralt,” he says, rolling his eyes, ignoring the voice in his head that says _yes, it is a pleasure, it’s warming to see his pursed lips and his golden eyes and his filthy hair hanging in his stupid face._ Geralt purses his lips harder. Jaskier exhales. “Who aren’t I in love with, really?” he continues. “It’s surprising, of course, that someone out there has managed to not fall for my charms, but —”

“I’d hoped you were telling stories,” Geralt bursts. Jaskier is stopped short by that.  
  
“Wait, you heard?” he asks, his stomach lurching.  
  
“Heard a minstrel had turned up at some society party with hanahaki disease. Thought maybe you made it up to be tragic,” Geralt growls. The fact that it does sound kind of like something Jaskier would do just makes it funnier, just makes it hurt more. “Came to see if it was true. Who is it?” Geralt says again. 

“What are you going to do?” Jaskier says, smiling in spite of himself. “Slay them for me, o Witcher?” He shakes his head. “Don’t worry your grungy head over it. There’s nothing to be done.”

“Hanahaki kills, you idiot,” Geralt snaps, his eyes flashing. 

Jaskier feels a sharp pain in his chest at that. It might be his heart, or it might be his lungs. 

“Everything worthwhile kills you eventually,” he says simply. “One way or another.”

Geralt just glares. Jaskier fires a crooked smile and goes back inside, willing himself not to look behind him at Geralt’s stormy bafflement.  
  
It’s like he said: there’s nothing to be done.  
  


* * *

  
  


Geralt is in the town for a couple days, and Jaskier spends it composing and singing and the nights being consoled for his heartbreak. He does not see much of Geralt while he’s stopped over, but when he does, it is Geralt’s silent watching, the almost audible sound of the witcher _thinking_ extremely hard.

He doesn’t room with Geralt. He’s not an idiot; he knows by now, of course, that he will go with Geralt when he leaves, has already figured out that he won’t be able to make himself stay away long enough to recover, if that’s even possible. But he can stay away from him for another night. He can live just one day longer. 

And it’s so much more palatable, isn’t it, to have the cooing redhead tongue yellow rose petals from his mouth than to sit in the corner of his and Geralt’s room, spitting into a wastebasket and avoiding his eyes.  
  
After a couple of days, though, Geralt comes and finds him, and announces they’re leaving in the morning. It’s surprising, because it’s not how Geralt normally puts it when it’s time to move on; normally it’s “ _I’m_ leaving in the morning,” and Jaskier simply packs and tags along, or bids him farewell and trusts their paths will cross soon enough. So in response to this definite declaration, there is nothing to do but nod and be ready with his bag and lute at sunrise.  
  
The road is smooth and fair, the sun warm on their backs. Geralt is as silent as usual, and Jaskier makes up for his silence as he always does, with music and idle chatter. It’s a lovely day, right until Jaskier is seized by a wracking cough so fierce he has to stop and lean his hands on his knees. Geralt pulls Roach to a stop and waits as Jaskier hacks up dandelions again, a mouthful of velvet soft blossoms crushed into spring-flavored fuzz and leaking petals into the breeze. He’s panting for breath by the time it finishes, and when he wipes his mouth it leaves a yellow pollen smear on the back of his hand.  
  
He dares a glance up at Geralt, who is watching him, tense and silent. Not for the first time, Jaskier curses how unreadable his friend is.  
  
“I’m fine,” Jaskier says.  
  
“Hm,” says Geralt, and resumes his progress down the road.  
  
It happens again when they make camp for the evening. Jaskier chokes on a cluster of blue violets, and tries to ignore Geralt staring holes into him from the other side of the fire.  
  
“I can feel you over there, trying to fish answers out of my brain with your eyes,” Jaskier says, sticking a finger in his mouth to dig a petal out from behind his tongue. “Stop it. I’m fine.”

“Is it recent?” Geralt asks. “Is it since you left?”  
  
Jaskier sighs.  
  
“No,” he says.  
  
Geralt doesn’t say anything to that. Jaskier picks up his lute, and the subject is closed for the evening.  
  
He doesn’t sing any love songs that night.

* * *

They get going early in the morning, which isn’t unusual. What is unusual is the pace they’re taking. Jaskier stumbles behind Roach in the cool pre-dawn, rubbing his eyes with one hand as he readjusts the pack on his shoulder with the other.  
  
“Where are we going in such a hurry?” he yawns. “You’d think you were on the way to a job, but if you’re to be believed you came to the last village just to find me.”  
  
“I did,” says Geralt.  
  
Jaskier at least makes a show of waiting for an elaboration that he knows isn’t coming. Geralt, atop his horse, stares resolutely forward.  
  
“So what’s the urgency, exactly?” says Jaskier.  
  
Geralt throws a look over his shoulder at Jasker that feels completely unearned. He knows Geralt considers Jaskier to have a unique talent for ridiculous nonsense, but Jaskier privately suspects that’s because of Geralt’s tendency to assume Jaskier knows what he’s talking about and that Jaskier is being deliberately obtuse.  
  
“Right,” Jaskier sighs, giving up. “Well, I hope you don’t expect me to march through lunch. That wasn’t much of a breakfast, and I _am_ an invalid.”  
  
Geralt halts Roach suddenly, and Jaskier nearly runs into her. Geralt wheels around with a growl.  
  
“Who _is it?_ ” he snarls, and Jaskier throws up his hands. _This_ again?  
  
“What would you do if you knew?” he demands. “What, exactly, is your plan? Track down my best beloved, and then what?”

“You could…” Geralt frowns. “...woo them.”

Jaskier has to laugh at that. The laugh hurts in his chest as it comes out of him, like there already isn’t room for it.

“If a simple wooing was all it took,” he says, “do you think I’d be in this situation?”

Geralt frowns harder, like he’s having difficulty believing there’s a problem Jaskier can’t seduce his way out of. Jaskier appreciates the confidence in him, at any rate.

“Look,” Jaskier says. “Fully a third of traveling minstrels come down with hanahaki disease sooner or later.” He’s not sure if that’s true, but it sounds good. “It’s simply an occupational hazard, my friend. If I keep my heart light and my feet moving, I could have ages yet. Hell, maybe I’ll even get over them.”

It seems unlikely, but Geralt doesn’t need to know that.

“How can you just... give up?” says Geralt.

Jaskier stands there and looks up at the annoyed, gorgeous, noble, unattainable Witcher in front of him, who is fixated on an extremely irritating enchantress and may not be emotionless, but is certainly repressed as all hell, and doesn’t really know what to tell him.

It’s a long minute of Jaskier’s silence before Geralt grunts impatiently and tugs Roach down the road again. 

Jaskier sighs and follows.

* * *

Trying to hide the coughing again makes it all the more obvious that it’s worse. It hurts to suppress it, like the petals are crowding his chest. He wonders if they stay in there, if whatever he’s growing in his lungs is smothering itself as well as him in its own shed blossoms. 

Jaskier lays on his back on his bedroll at night, and draws slow breaths as long and deep as he can. There is a rattle in his chest at the deepest point, impossible to ignore. This will kill him, he thinks deliberately, and listens to the rattle. Breathe out, breathe in. Listen to the thin, shaky noise his body makes, his lungs which served his music so well all these years and are betraying him now. 

He betrayed them first, he supposes, by making them sing songs about the man that doesn’t love him.  
  
On the other side of the fire, Geralt sleeps as still as a stone, his chest barely rising at all.  
  
This was always going to kill him, one way or another, Jaskier thinks, and he rolls away from the fire and muffles his coughs in his sleeve as best he can. The mashed jonquil flowers are salty with phlegm as he spits them out and it hurts, it hurts.  
  
It’s fine. It’s nothing new.  
  
  


* * *

The really insidious part, of course, is that it doesn’t hurt all the time. They travel in silence, Geralt’s presence steady as a mountain, and it’s good. Jaskier chatters and Geralt listens, and it’s good. They pass a tree with a woodlark singing, and Geralt tilts his head and listens, and the smallest of smiles curls his mouth, and it’s so fucking good. 

Jaskier pulls his eyes away from Geralt’s profile for the tenth time that afternoon, and convulses with a stifled cough. They’ve been three days on the road, and he’s gotten good at not letting it out of his throat, ignoring the pain, but the coughs jerk him like an abused marionette. This one is bad enough that he misses a step, but he thinks for a second that he’s gotten away with it, that Geralt hasn’t noticed.  
  
“I don’t know why you’re trying to hold it in,” Geralt says, without looking over at him.  
  
Jaskier almost says _Force of habit,_ but he doesn’t, because he tries not to tell jokes for only his own benefit, and he doesn’t want to explain that he doesn’t mean the flowers.  
  
“Wouldn’t want to disturb your brooding,” he says instead. Geralt snorts.

“You do nothing but disturb my brooding,” he counters. Jaskier presses a shocked hand to his chest.  
  
“And to have you admit that you brood is the greatest thanks I could ask for,” he says.  
  
“Hm,” says Geralt. 

Jaskier drags a breath through a ribcage full of wetly rustling foliage, and laughs.

* * *

He genuinely doesn’t suspect Geralt’s purposes even when they track Yennefer down. Gods forbid, of course, that he should have something else on his mind.  
  
She’s ingratiated herself into the court of a scandalous noble lady of Jaskier’s former _intimate_ acquaintance. She’d always been both interesting and flexible — in multiple senses — and they’d parted on good terms. Plus she had always kept company, as a rule, with people of similar dispositions. By the time a butler comes to guide them to the guest wing, Jaskier has made up his mind that whatever Geralt’s business here is, Jaskier will be able to keep himself very well distracted.  
  
People like this are of course far too fascinating and mysterious to call each other by their natural given names (he counts himself among such people — imagine signing art like his with _Julian_ ). So when the butler directs them to the room of “the marquess's favorite witch,” he assumes he’s about to make the probably delightful acquaintance of his friend’s latest lover.  
  
Maybe he does, at that. The delight, of course, excepted.  
  
Yennefer’s face when she comes into the room is like a spring day, which is to say it comes over all stormclouds in an instant, with no provocation.

“Geralt, Jaskier,” she greets. “To what do I owe the displeasure?” Jaskier is not even a little bit curious as to how Geralt and she had parted ways last, that she would be in such a snit. Her eyes rake down Geralt and up again, and Jaskier has even less interest in that, ugh.  
  
“Believe me, my lady,” Jaskier sneers. “The displeasure is all mine.”

Geralt ignores their exchange, crossing his arms over his chest. 

“He has hanahaki disease,” he says, and Jaskier’s heart clenches.  
  
“Does he,” Yennefer says. Jaskier crosses his arms too, and scowls as she casts a considering eye over him. She meets his gaze for a long, unsettling moment, and then looks back to Geralt. “And what am I, a leechwoman?” she says. “There’s no cure. It’s a magical illness.”  
  
“That’s what I said!” Jaskier says peevishly. Yennefer glances over to him, but Geralt doesn’t.  
  
“Yes, a magical illness,” Geralt agrees, unperturbed. “Which is why I came to a sorceress, and not a leechwoman.”  
  
“I cannot forever be fixing up your bard,” she sighs, and turns back to Jaskier. “Who is it?”  
  
“He won’t tell me,” harrumphs Geralt. “He’s afraid I’ll slay them or something.” Yennefer pays no attention to him, which is at least a little bit gratifying.  
  
“You told him that wouldn’t help, right?” she demands of Jaskier. He uncrosses his arms to throw them up helplessly.  
  
“He hasn’t been in a listening mood,” Jaskier reports.  
  
Yennefer snorts — elegantly, of course — and stares at Jaskier consideringly. Just as he is beginning to fidget, she swivels decisively toward Geralt.  
  
“You may go,” she declares.  
  
Geralt’s bristly eyebrows bunch in confusion, but Yennefer is already waving him off before he can protest.  
  
“As difficult as you might find it to believe,” she says, “this isn’t your business and doesn’t have to do with you. Please get out and I’ll do what I can.”  
  
The eyebrows bunch harder, if anything. But after a long, tense moment, Geralt grunts and heads for the door.  
  
Yennefer waits patiently until he has passed through it and shut the door behind him, and then turns to Jaskier.  
  
She doesn’t say anything, just looks at him. He is not expecting the solemn softness in her violet eyes. Jaskier can only hold her gaze for a minute before he has to look away.  
  
“Shit,” says Yennefer.

“I assume that isn’t short for ‘Shit, I just remembered the cure for hanahaki,” Jaskier says lighty. 

Yennefer says nothing. Her lips are pressed together tightly as she clasps her own elbows in either hand. Inasmuch as Jaskier believes she’s capable of human emotion, he’d almost say she looks sad.

“No,” Jaskier sighs. “I didn’t think so.”  
  
He walks over to a velvet armchair and throws himself into it. His throat is tickling, but he’s not going to vomit flowers in front of fucking Yennefer if he can help it.  
  
“Who is it?” she asks, with the flat, quiet tone that goes with asking a question you already know the answer to. Jaskier is not impressed with the formality. He shoots her a withering look.  
  
“Who do you think?” he says. 

She does not look appropriately chastised, but she doesn’t look pitying either, which is something. She just stands there near the door, pressing her forearms together, and nods once.  
  
“I’m sorry, for what it’s worth,” she says.  
  
He thinks about saying _What for? You aren’t standing between him and anybody_. But it seems, yes, all right, a little unprovoked.  
  
“It’s not worth much,” he says anyway. He blows out a gusty breath, which turns out to be a mistake as he chokes on something in his throat. He swallows the sensation down. “But thank you,” he adds reluctantly.

His cough catches up with him suddenly and without warning. He gags and pitches forward in his chair, coughing bent over with his head nearly between his knees. For a terrifying second his throat is blocked, and he gasps on reflex and gags harder, his throat convulsing painfully around something more than a handful of petals. His eyes start to water, and he is barely aware of a deep ceramic bowl being pushed into his hands.  
  
He retches, and chokes, and coughs up a long rope of scratchy pink blossom. Almost before he’s spit it out there’s another scraping its way up his irritated throat. There’s bile and pollen in his sinuses, and he can’t see for the burning tears in his eyes, and what little breath he can get between heaving and coughing is thin and crackling and not enough, not enough.  
  
It feels like ages before the last flower frees itself from his throat and nothing follows. He sits, panting, clutching the bowl and squeezing his eyes shut against a sledgehammer headache. His throat burns, and keeps twitching in involuntary little half gulps, trying to clear away the sensation and the bitter debris.  
  
He feels the bowl tugged gently from his hands, and he lets it go and opens his eyes.  
  
“Love-lies-bleeding,” Yennefer says, looking into the bowl.  
  
For a few dizzy seconds, he thinks she is waxing poetic about the state of his heart.

She looks up and tips the bowl toward him for his consideration, and he realizes she’s naming the flower by one of its more eloquent monikers. He peers at the long pink-purple tassels, curled in the bottom of the bowl like slick wet garden worms. Jaskier sits up straighter and wipes his wet cheeks.  
  
“Velvet flower,” he says, giving another name. His voice is rough as sandpaper. “Didn’t feel like velvet.”  
  
“You’ve been holding it in,” Yennefer says. “The cough. It makes it more damaging, shouldn’t you fucking know that?”

“My hanahaki education has mostly consisted of what makes the best story,” he croaks. “But I’ll keep that in mind.” Yennefer’s expression is tight and strained, and it raises an uncomfortable suspicion in his chest. “Well, doctor,” he says. “Give it to me straight. How long do I have?”  
  
“I’m not a doctor,” she says immediately. “I don’t know. I’ve only ever seen —” She cuts herself off.  
  
“But you have seen,” says Jaskier, “haven’t you? You’ve seen the progress of it first hand.”  
  
“Years ago,” she frowns. “But I…” She shakes her head. “It’s an ugly way to die, bard.”  
  
“Good to know,” he says. “How long?”  
  
Gods help him, Yennefer of Vengerberg actually hesitates.  
  
“You could have months, still,” she says.  
  
Jaskier tips back his head and laughs. It’s a cracked, raw sound, and hurts almost as much in his ears as his throat.  
  
“Or I could have less,” he says. “That’s what you mean, right?”  
  
“It could still be cured in the usual way at any point,” she says. “As long as you’re breathing, it can be reversed.”  
  
By Jaskier falling out of love, or Geralt falling in. Neither are likely. Still, the reassurance is more humanity than he usually expects of her.  
  
“Is that why you stay alone?” he says on a sudden whim. “Because you’ve seen this happen?”  
  
Yennefer turns away and sets the ceramic bowl down on a table.  
  
“I swore off matters of the heart long before I ever saw someone die of the disease,” she says. “But it was certainly… additional motivation.”

It was probably the wiser approach, Jaskier can admit. His hanahaki experience might have been third or fourth hand before now, but he does know something about love, and at some level you always walk into it with your eyes open. You don’t choose to fall in love, especially with someone who doesn’t love you the same way. But you choose to open your heart, you choose to talk with them and worry about them and think about them when they’re not there, and once you realize their happiness, their approval is unusually important to you, you choose to still try to make them smile. 

Nobody chooses to be an alcoholic. Jaskier saw how fast the first bottle of Geralt had gone down, and shrugged and uncorked another. Yennefer, for her part, has apparently decided to keep to water. It doesn’t make for much of a party, Jaskier thinks, but then Yennefer isn’t going to die within months, probably, so there might be something to be said for water.

Too late now, anyway.

“Tell your witcher I’ll do some research and get to him in the morning,” Yennefer says. 

“What is there to research?” Jaskier scoffs.

“Nothing!” she snaps. “Obviously there’s nothing. But If you tell him that he won’t get any sleep, will he?” That startles another laugh out of him. Yennefer understands Geralt better than Jaskier likes to admit she does, and it makes him a little sad for reasons he does not expect. It makes him sad, somehow, for _her_.

“Fine, I’ll leave you to ‘research.’” he says. “Somebody in this place ought to at least pretend to use the marquess's fine libraries.”

“She does have excellent libraries, doesn't she?” Yennefer exclaims. “I’d have never expected it.”

Jaskier stands, and tries a careful deep breath. It crackles more than usual, and he winces and rubs at his chest with the heel of his hand.

“Well,” he says, “a library is a very sexy place to have an assignation.”

“Is it? I’ll have to try it,” says Yennefer as she walks over to a wall and tugs a velvet cord there. Jaskier can feel the sour expression come over his face, and she looks back over her shoulder at him and rolls her eyes. “Oh don’t look at me like that. Not with _him._ He’s far too busy fretting over you.”  
  
Jaskier isn’t sure he’d describe what Geralt does as ‘fretting’ - more like thinking very loudly and grumpily - but he’s not prepared to argue the point. He really just wants to sleep.

A servant opens the door, and Yennefer smiles, all regal courtesy.  
  
“Have rooms been prepared for the bard and his companion?” she asks, and the servant nods and gestures Jaskier out into the corridor.  
  
He pauses before he goes.  
  
“Thank you,” he says.  
  
Yennefer turns toward him frowning, like she wasn’t expecting him to say such a thing. To be fair, he wasn’t expecting it either.  
  
After a moment, she nods.  
  
“You’re welcome,” she says, and Jaskier follows the servant out.

* * *

Jaskier is perfectly capable of getting up early on his own willpower when it’s in a fine estate with a fabulous breakfast spread. He connects with the marquess, who is just as delightful as he remembers. Jaskier hacks up columbine into his satin napkin and is met with practically a round of applause from the table. 

The attention doesn’t console in the way it used to. Jaskier smiles his excuses, takes a nectarine from a bowl, and goes to find Geralt.

Geralt is up too, of course, drinking black coffee in a small courtyard.  
  
“Have you been to see Yennefer yet?” Jaskier asks, but isn’t expecting Geralt to shake his head.  
  
“Well,” says Jaskier. “We’ll go together.”

They find her in one of those lovely libraries, sitting at a desk covered in open books. She almost gives the impression she’s actually been researching, especially when she looks up from her work with dark-ringed eyes.

“Did you find anything?” Geralt says immediately.  
  
There is a pause, which Jaskier figures is just Yennefer making him wait for his rudeness. But she flicks a look to Jaskier, too brief for him to divine what she means by it, and then stands and looks back at Geralt.  
  
“There is a lake,” she says.  
  
Jaskier tries not to boggle, but he doesn’t quite manage.  
  
“A lake,” says Geralt flatly.  
  
“Yes, says Yennefer. “Enchanted. Healing. But it’s much too far away, it’s practically on the other side of the continent. There’s no point trying.”

Well, that’s no way to convince Geralt not to do something, Jaskier thinks, and then thinks, ah.

“Where is it?” demands Geralt, his eyes flashing.

“There’s no _point_ , Geralt, if it was easy to get to do you think anyone would be worried about plagues—”

The weeks it would take to get to the other side of the continent may be more time than Jaskier even has. But it would give Geralt a project, keep him focused, keep him from leaving Jaskier behind. And there are a couple lakes in legends that could plausibly be the one Yennefer is talking about.

There’s no lake, obviously. That’s not the point.  
  
“I’ve never heard of this lake,” Geralt snaps.  
  
Yennefer looks at Jaskier, and then so does Geralt.  
  
Jaskier shrugs, trying to look baffled and innocent. Geralt looks back at Yennefer.  
  
“Where is it,” he says again, quieter, firmer.  
  
Yennefer takes a long breath in through her nose, and then does a very good impression of relenting.  
  
“I’ll draw you a map,” she says.  
  


* * *

Jaskier thanks Yennefer, very quietly, a few paces behind Geralt as they leave. She nods in response, and that’s their goodbye. This time yesterday he would not have imagined that he would want a goodbye with Yennefer of Vengerberg. Now, he honestly almost regrets that he won’t see her again. 

The hostess kisses Jaskier elegantly on either cheek before he goes, as Geralt stands, five paces away, huffing impatiently like an offended horse. Jaskier allows the farewell the time it needs, though. People like the Marquess are one of the things he’ll miss about the world.

Geralt doesn’t speak until long after the estate has disappeared over the horizon. It is the two of them alone on the road, the sun still climbing behind them.  
  
“A lake?” Geralt says.

Jaskier looks at Geralt, but the witcher isn’t glaring at Jaskier in either a suspicious or accusatory way. He is, in fact, not glaring at all. He’s just looking straight ahead between Roach’s ears, his face as placid a mask as ever.

“Uh, yeah,” says Jaskier. “You know, legendary, but. If anyone would know the truth I guess it’d probably be Her Witchiness.”  
  
“Think that might be the nicest thing I’ve ever heard you say about her,” Geralt reflects.  
  
“Don’t get used to it,” Jaskier sniffs.  
  
“So it _isn’t_ her that you’re coughing flowers about, then?”  
  
Jaskier whips around again, but Geralt is smiling, that tiny, smothered smile he wears so rarely.  
  
“That’s disgusting,” Jaskier declares. “You’re disgusting.” His cough gives lie to the statement, though. It’s dandelions again, a throatful, drier and more bitter than they have been. For a second he tries to keep walking, but the cough, while not deep, goes on long enough to steal his air and he has to pause in the road and try to breathe through it. Geralt stops too, and waits while Jaskier gasps around a sunshiny tumble of mulched dandelion blossoms.  
  
“Was it the Marquess?” Geralt asks, more quietly, once Jaskier’s cough has slowed down.  
  
Jaskier laughs a little bit and spits fine petals into the air.  
  
“No,” he says, rubbing at his chest. “Do you figure I’ll tell you should you guess, even if I won’t when you ask? Or are you betting against my ability to lie?”

He’s prepared to turn either one into a joke, something to lead the conversation away from the thing that’s killing him. But Geralt doesn’t answer.  
  
“They have… meanings, don’t they?” he says instead, which is the last thing Jaskier expected. He gives a strangely guilty start as Geralt frowns down at the scattering of yellow on the path. “The flowers. It’s been dandelions before.”  
  
Geralt is right, about the meanings, although Jaskier doesn’t know why he knows that. It’s more of the kind of thing a minstrel would know, of which he’s sure Geralt is aware. Jaskier looks at the flowers too, so he doesn’t have to look at Geralt.  
  
“Happiness, I think,” he says, trying to keep his voice light. “And loyalty.”  
  
Geralt doesn’t say anything. Jaskier doesn’t know if he wants him to or not.  
  
The moment goes just a little too long, and Jaskier gets suddenly nervous. He steals a glance at Geralt - whose frown is as impenetrable as ever, damn him - and then takes off down the road again, his stride long and restless.  
  
“Well,” he says. “Anyway.”

Geralt follows and stays quiet.

* * *

  
  
It happens so fast after that.

He wakes coughing in the night more and more often. Maybe he’s having dreams about Geralt, or maybe the thing in him is growing on its own power by now, doesn’t need his help to kill him. Some nights he keeps it quiet, muffled in his bedroll. Some nights Geralt hears.  
  
At first he rises and brings Jaskier a waterskin, or tries to start tea in his little copper pot in the embers of the fire. Once Jaskier catches his breath, though, he explains — three times — that when he coughs like that, he’s more likely to drown on tea than drink it.  
  
Geralt accepts this with difficulty. Now when Jaskier coughs, Geralt just… sits up, watches him across the fire like an animal startled in the woods. Jaskier wonders if it’s just to give witness to Jaskier’s last gasp, should this be the night. It isn’t as though there’s anything he can do. But they both sit up all the same, and look at each other wordlessly as Jaskier fills his hands with the plentiful purple of heliotrope, his wet, horrible hacking drowning out the subtler sounds of the night. It is like some kind of performance, he thinks wryly, his eyes watering as he sputters through the feeling of tiny blossoms sticking to his tongue and his throat. Geralt never liked his singing, so he says. Maybe this is more to his taste.  
  
Jaskier knows that isn’t true. He wouldn’t be in love if it was. 

Geralt just watches, a silent audience, until the coughing subsides, and then they lay back down.  
  
At least he won’t die alone.

* * *

One morning they gather up, douse the fire, and Geralt picks up Jaskier’s pack instead of his own.  
  
“Think you’re confused,” Jaskier says. “Unless you’re hoping I’ll take a turn carrying yours, but I can’t ensure the safety of all your little glass bottles-”  
  
“You’re riding today,” Geralt says, and Jaskier’s mouth pops comically closed. He doesn’t exactly need to ask _why_ , when his breath comes short now more often than it doesn’t, but he feels like he ought to object anyway.  
  
“Way to convince a man he’s really dying,” he jokes, but climbs carefully onto Roach.

Roach shuffles in a decidedly malevolent manner, but Geralt pats her nose and shushes her and she calms. Jaskier coughs a few helpless blue violets into the wind and winces against the pain.

Geralt affixes his own pack to the saddle, and they get underway again. It’s so like every journey they’ve taken together over the years, and — from atop the horse, especially — so unlike, too. Jaskier hums a tune, to keep his breathing slow and even as much as for the sake of the music. He wonders if Roach would object to his playing his lute?

“Tell me about them,” Geralt says, and Jaskier looks down at him, startled.  
  
“About what?”  
  
Geralt gestures in an utterly unhelpful way.  
  
“Whoever it is,” he says. “A favorite subject of those in love, I thought.”  
  
Jaskier chuckles. They ride in silence for a moment.  
  
“Kind,” he says finally. “Kinder than they’re credited, or would admit. Moral code as upright and immovable as an oak. A deep thinker.” He pauses, rubs his chest. “An idiot, obviously. Absolute moron, totally hopeless.”  
  
“Obviously,” Geralt echoes dryly.

“Stubborn, clueless disaster,” Jaskier continues, and coughs into his fist. “Senses incoming happiness and starts running, and has managed to outpace it nearly every time thus far.” He has to stop at that, to hunch over Roach’s neck with a wet, ugly cough that feels like a hammer to his chest. He spits out a mouthful of sour-tasting violets now, and thinks longingly of the kind they sugar and put on cakes at the best sort of parties. Never so lucky.  
  
“I know the type,” says Geralt - Jaskier laughs with what little breath he has - “but it doesn’t seem like yours.”  
  
“It doesn’t, does it?” Jaskier reflects, and heaves up a new torrent of violets. The spasm is so severe that Geralt steps forward and brings Roach to a halt with a hand on her harness. All three wait for Jaskier to catch his breath again.  
  
“Is that why you won’t go to them?” says Geralt, as Jaskier tries to steady his breathing. “Because they refuse happiness?”  
  
“You trying to get rid of me faster?” Jaskier jokes weakly. Geralt sighs. 

“I’m trying to figure out —”  
  
“Who they are?”  
  
“Why they’re worth it,” Geralt counters, and then his forehead furrows. “What do you mean, get rid of you faster?”  
  
Jaskier takes a swig from his waterskin and swishes away the taste of bile and violets. He spits in the dirt, earning a terrifying glare from Roach.  
  
“It makes it worse,” he says, and wipes his mouth on his sleeve. “Thinking about them, being more in love with them. It makes the cough worse. Don’t you know _any_ hanahaki stories?”  
  
“No,” Geralt says. He stares at Jaskier with a particular variety of stoicism that probably translates as “baffled distress.” “Why did you answer the question, then?”  
  
Jaskier laughs. It’s not the sound it would have been once, and it burns in his chest, but it’s warming even so.  
  
“You’ve really never been in love, have you?” he asks fondly.  
  
Geralt says nothing to that. Jaskier gestures at his pack on Geralt’s hip.  
  
“Give me my lute,” he says. If that last coughing fit didn’t make Roach throw him, he figures he’s probably safe plucking strings.  
  
Geralt hands it up to Jaskier, who plays a couple soft notes and then sets to strumming. He picks a song about one of Geralt’s fights with a terrible barghest, and the witcher doesn’t even object. But Jaskier sings it quietly, just in case.

  
  


* * *

They pass one farm, and then another. The road they’re travelling becomes wider and better trodden, and Jaskier knows there must be a town coming up. At a fork, Geralt starts to turn away from the more heavily worn path, and Jaskier groans.

“Look, I know humans give you a rash and we’re still good on supplies for a while,” he says. “But perhaps we could make a stop in town all the same?” Geralt turns a frown on him, and Jaskier sighs. “You know, so I can perform?”

He’s not _trying_ to lay guilt on anyone, but the unspoken “for the last time” rings in the air like a bell. Jaskier cringes when he hears it. He wants immediately to say that’s not what he meant, but he can feel the truth in his lungs, twining up his trachea, tickling his throat. There almost isn’t any room in his chest for him anymore, let alone for the air he has to drag past it all.

Geralt looks like he knows it, too. His face creases in something like pain, and to Jaskier’s faint surprise, nods and turns their path toward the village. Jaskier coughs up a few feathery white myrtle flowers and spits them unobtrusively out onto the dirt path, grimacing and rubbing at his chest.

The sun is setting as they begin to emerge from the trees, and Jaskier can see the warm yellow of lantern glow shining through the twilight. The sight cheers him even more than he would admit to Geralt, and he sits up a little straighter on Roach as they ride into the village.

He stays with Geralt as they secure a stable, instead of heading straight for the inn the way he would have before. He pretends it’s to keep Geralt company, but he sees the long walk to the building and feels a little dizzy. 

When Roach is put up safely, they make their way together to the inn, and Jaskier isn’t sure if he’s imagining that Geralt walks a little slower than normal, or that he seems suddenly to be walking much closer when Jaskier sways on his feet.

The inn is bright and warm and full of sound and delicious smells. Jaskier finds a chair and sits to take long, slow breaths while Geralt goes to the bar to get them drinks and supper. It doesn’t take long for a patron to spot Jaskier’s lute and start to caw for a performance. Jaskier laughs and allows himself to be coaxed to the front of the room while Geralt sets their ales down on their table and frowns.

He chooses a love song because what the hell? Everything worthwhile kills you. And it’s worthwhile to be in love, it is, it feels good. It makes him happy. He even cherishes the ache in his lungs because damn, it could have been hatred that killed him, couldn’t it? He’s pissed enough people off. It could have been a monster, what with all the following a witcher around, or it could even have been an accident. He could have been bumped off the mortal coil by something as vulgar as _fate_ , and isn’t that an appalling thought?

No, far better this, to be done in by campfires, and chamomile salve, and a black clad witcher sitting at the back wall of a tavern and brooding. So Jaskier sings a love song.

Or he tries. He only gets as far as the second chorus before his singing becomes more wheeze than melody. He tries to suck in a breath mid-line, but it’s like breathing through a reed, and the effort sets him to coughing — regular, mundane coughing, on nothing but pain and too little air. Black spots start to dance in front of his eyes, and he stumbles over to grip the back of a chair.

Jaskier is too focused on breathing slow and steady to notice Geralt until a hand is on his shoulder. He looks up into unhappy yellow eyes and he doubles back over under a throatful of deep red rose petals.

 _Tacky_ , he thinks, and then his vision goes a little gray and he has to concentrate on getting oxygen.

A broad warm arm wraps around Jaskier’s middle and half leads, half carries him to their table in the back, and the rose petals keep coming, wide and silky and obscene, as fast as he can spit them out. Each is big enough to block a windpipe all on its own, half-rotten in their full bloom softness and red like an arterial bleed, filling the air with their damp, cloying scent. He can’t hear the sound of the tavern patrons murmuring so much as he can imagine it. He can imagine the sight he must make, looking small under Geralt’s fretting bulk, rasping in air between coughs, and leaving a trail of petals across the inn floor, more quantity of red than could ever fit in his body. It’s got to look like something out of a damn painting.

He’ll have to take that as consolation. Artist though he may be, he doesn’t like _being_ art, only tells his own stories with a few degrees of separation. So if he has to be here, if this has to be happening, his heart and his business splashed in front of everyone, at least it’s _good_ art, at least the final performance of the great Jaskier was worthy of a ballad, even if no one present besides the subject has the skill or inclination to write one.

“Are you all right?” says Geralt. 

Jaskier pauses for a gasping moment, and looks at Geralt, who is knelt on the floor in front of Jaskier’s knees, looking back at him with such troubled sincerity that Jaskier can feel a giggle gathering in his throat along with the petals. He reaches up and lays a hand on Geralt’s cheek, simply because that kind of daring ought to be a privilege of the dying. Geralt’s eyes go startled, and Jaskier starts laughing. He is laughing and coughing in turns, at once, both together, the flowers coming too much and too fast to gather any wet from his aching throat. 

At some point the roses turn into marigolds, and he only notices the difference because the smaller petals are easier to spit. He coughs, and he coughs, and he coughs, and fuck death, fuck dying. Fuck worthwhile. Jaskier vomits marigolds, and laughs.

* * *

Sleep is shallow and broken and not enough. He wakes still exhausted but with his breath too short to allow any more sleep, and groans in frustration as his eyes open.

He must have been sleeping more deeply than he realized at _some_ point in the evening, because he finds himself propped halfway to sitting with all the meager pillows in the room, and Geralt sitting in a wooden chair by the door, watching him.

“I know I’m pretty,” Jaskier croaks, “but we’ve talked about watching me sleep.”

“How do you feel?” says Geralt. 

Jaskier tries to laugh, but then stops and presses a hand to his sternum. _Fuck,_ his chest hurts.

“A little under the weather,” he says.

“The innkeeper said she’d be happy to have you again tonight if you’re doing any better,” Geralt says.

Jaskier wonders what conversation after Geralt got him to the room prompted such a message. Had the innkeeper volunteered the offer? Had she asked after his health? Had Geralt, upon going to fetch this truly unprecedented number of pillows, apologized for the spectacle and explained that Jaskier had simply begged for a chance to horrify these gracious travelers a second time?

“No, I think that was my curtain call,” Jaskier says with a crooked smile. “It’s all right. I’ve many other performances to my name, that the world can remember me better by.”

Something happens to Geralt’s face, a quick, pained twist, like a knifepoint has found the seam of his armor. Jaskier blames the lack of oxygen for the fact that it honestly takes him a second to figure out what might have prompted it.

“Don’t look so upset,” Jaskier teases, although even now that’s a bit of an exaggeration as Geralt’s expression schools back into something nearly neutral. Nearly. “You’ll make me feel guilty for leaving you. You did fine before me, and you’ll do fine after me.”

Geralt’s face pinches again, and for a second it looks like he’s not going to say anything to that. Then he takes a small, abrupt breath, and straightens his spine.  
  
“I didn’t,” he says, quiet but firm. “I won’t.”

Jaskier blinks in surprise, but Geralt is already standing from his chair. He slips out the door, closing it silently behind him, and Jaskier is left in the inn room, alone with the sound of his own labored breathing and the whitegold light of morning coming in through the window.

* * *

The afternoon sun is climbing over the heavy trees they walk beneath, but it is still earlier than they would normally break when they pass a large lake. 

“We’ll stop for a rest,” Geralt says, and Jaskier tries not to sigh in relief.

Getting off Roach and settling himself in the grass near the shore is just about all the energy Jaskier has, and he’s grateful but a little embarrassed when Geralt gravely fetches Jaskier’s waterskin for him. The lake is beautiful, dark and still, all the better for the sun to highlight the ripples of an occasional jumping fish. Jaskier sits and looks at it for a while as Geralt waters Roach, and runs his fingers through the grass, and works on breathing with the same quiet patience of a man whittling stone. Jaskier is not accustomed to quiet patience, but he’s learning. Never too late, they say.

“We should get moving again soon,” says Geralt after a while. “Plenty of daylight still, and a long way to the lake.”

Jaskier looks at the shimmering water. He can feel his fingers shake as they comb through the grass — they haven’t stopped shaking all day, which he imagines Geralt has noticed. What Geralt can hardly help but have noticed is the slowness with which Jaskier moves, the noisy difficulty of his breathing. He is so tired. They barely have the village behind them, but even being helped onto Roach feels like an impossible task.

“This is a lake,” Jaskier murmurs. “Maybe we’re here. Maybe this is the lake.” He doesn’t look at Geralt as he speaks. A bird swoops low over the water, and he watches that. “Maybe we don’t have to go anywhere.”

There is a long quiet beside him.

“If that’s what you want,” Geralt says quietly. 

Jaskier nods, his lips pressed together. There have been times in the last couple of days that he thought the cruelest trick of all this has been how it’s stolen his ability to fill an awkward pause with soothing chatter, but now he sits and lets the weight of the silence rest on his shoulders like a comforting hand.

“You knew the whole time that there wasn’t any magic lake,” Jaskier says to the reeds swaying by the lakeshore.

“Hm,” says Geralt.

Jaskier smiles. He raises his head to look at the witcher standing on the grass beside him, frowning reliably at the water.

“Why humor me, then?”

Geralt looks at him, and then away again. In the trees behind them, a squirrel barks, a tiny insistent sound against the forest and the sky. After a moment Geralt lowers himself to the grass and folds one leg under him.

“Figured anything a man would spend his last days doing… it must be important,” Geralt answers. 

Jaskier laughs and starts coughing, small and shallow.

“It was. It was important,” Jaskier says. He spits a familiar yellow fuzz and ignores it, tries to breathe over the spasms. “It was fun, which is the most important thing of all.” He devotes his concentration to a long breath, tries to get all the way to the bottom of his lungs, because he needs to say this, he needs to have it heard. “I wish we could have done it, walked all the way across the… the continent together. I dislike camping less than... I say, I can finally admit.” The end of the sentence breaks off into a cough, dandelions coming out both whole and in pieces into his fist. “At least… At least this kind. I wish we could’ve walked across the continent, and—” He gasps for breath, coughs on the effort, on flowers, on pollen and the little yellow eyelashes of petals. “—and turned around and come back, and then done it again.”

His vision is swimming, his coughing feeble because he doesn’t have the air for anything else. He thinks maybe he sees specks of blood on the flowers falling onto the grass, but it’s hard to say. His chest burns and crackles like cooking grease on a leaping campfire. 

This is it, he realizes. He’s been feeling it coming for days, but it feels sudden all the same.  
  
“Because whenever it happened, however I died, that’s… that’s how I’d have wanted to spend the last days,” he rasps. “With you.”

“With me,” says Geralt slowly, evenly. “Not with your beloved?” 

For a second, Jaskier thinks that… but no, he should know better than to internalize all that ‘Witchers don’t have feelings’ nonsense even for a second. It’s not stoicism that looks back at him, but a sadness as still and deep as the lake, Geralt’s eyes dark with understanding. 

“Fuck, Jaskier,” Geralt sighs. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Jaskier wants to laugh, would laugh if he could get the air for it, because why indeed? Why, except that dying in silence seemed more the done thing, as though Geralt could never forgive him an indiscrete heart. As though Geralt hadn’t been forgiving him for as much since the day they met. 

He wishes he hadn’t waited. He wishes he’d said it weeks ago, so that he would have had the time to say everything else, say _It’s okay that I was alone in this, because in everything else I was never less alone than with you, because for all my talk and all your silence I always knew you were listening, really listening when it mattered._ Say _Yennefer is maybe slightly less terrible than I claimed, much like camping, and if the two of you can figure out a way to make each other happy, you should do it._

All he can do instead is grin, and cough, and cough, an endless trickle of soft, tattered dandelions. His cheeks have the coolness of tears, and he doesn’t know if he’s somehow tipped over into Geralt’s arms or been gathered there. 

His chest hurts. His throat is raw and what little air passes through it burns, but there are arms around him and sunshine reflecting off of water. His mouth tastes like spring. 

Geralt looks so sad. Jaskier ought to sing, to cheer him up. He knows Geralt really likes his singing, whatever else he says. 

He will sing for Geralt, as soon as his body stops shaking.

Jaskier watches the breeze carry white fuzz by his darkening eyes — dandelions, gone to seed.

* * *

He awakes to a cool breeze on his face. His throat aches, but when his lips part in an instinctive gasp, they let in a stinging luxury of air.

There is a shifting under him, a strangled sound like that of an injured animal, and rough hands on his face.

Jaskier’s fingers tighten over a familiar arm, and he slowly unseals his eyes.

Geralt is holding him, staring down with an expression Jaskier’s never seen, naked in its desperation. 

“Jaskier?” Geralt says hoarsely, and Jaskier gets the distinct impression it isn’t the first time he’s said it. Geralt’s eyes are wet and reddened, and Jaskier takes in this baffling sight as he reorients his foggy thoughts. Geralt is touching him, touching his face, like he expects him to disappear any moment, like the contact is the only thing keeping him tethered to this world.

Oh. Right.

His fingers close tighter on Geralt’s arm. Jaskier clears his throat.

“Well, I’m definitely still in love with you,” he observes. His voice is ragged but not weak; he can feel his lungs blessedly whole and empty inside of him, full of nothing but life. Geralt’s own breath hitches, and a hand twitches on Jaskier’s cheek. Jaskier reaches up and covers it with his, then swallows.  
  
“But I’m also not dead,” he adds. “So I am forced to assume that you must have waited until truly the _very last possible moment_ to figure something out.”

Geralt blinks hard, and his mouth trembles. Even after everything, Jaskier has to force himself not to hold his breath.

“Is there something you need to say to me, Geralt?” Jaskier asks as calmly as he possibly can, fighting the smile that’s trying to curl his lips.  
  
Geralt, bless him, looks a little bit at sea. They stare at one another.

“I…” Geralt says, but then stops.

Jaskier coughs.

It’s not like _that,_ all right? It wasn’t on _purpose_. He’s done a number on his lungs lately, that’s all. But Geralt looks horribly stricken, like that moment in the inn room, and his body, for a moment, convulses around Jaskier.

And then suddenly, Geralt is kissing him. 

It is _very_ nice. Even if it wasn’t nice it would be nice, because he’s alive and breathing and wrapped up in arms as big as hamhocks, and instead of nice it’s goddamn amazing because this is Geralt, Geralt is fucking kissing him, and every inch of Jaskier’s skin that ever carefully memorized a casual brush of bodies or touch of fingertips is on _fire._

Geralt pulls away.

“You were right about me,” he says.  
  
“Obviously,” Jaskier gulps, gripping handfuls of Geralt’s shirt. “A biographer should know his subject. Which time when I was right are we referring to, though?”

“About how I… run,” Geralt grinds out.

Even with his newly oxygenated brain, it takes Jaskier a second to place that.

“Oh, right,” he says, then grins. “Yes, I was. I also said you were an idiot,” he reminds. To his delight, Geralt nods.

“An absolute moron,” Geralt agrees. “Totally hopeless.”

It is now Jaskier kissing Geralt. This takes somewhat longer, though not as long as he would like, because it turns out the imperative for air is a little more urgent than it used to be. As soon as Jaskier breaks it, Geralt presses his forehead against Jaskier’s and they sit there, panting in the grass. Geralt’s hands are mired in the back of Jaskier’s tunic, probably ruining it, but the novelty of being clutched by Geralt of Rivia more than makes up for the cost of his tailoring.

Is this what was hiding behind all of his grunting and distance and “I’m not your friend”? He holds Jaskier like someone’s trying to take him away. Jaskier supposes someone sort of was.

“Fuck,” says Geralt. “You _died_ ,” and his voice is too wrung out to tease. 

“I didn’t,” Jaskier says. “I’m here.” Geralt buries his face in Jaskier’s neck, and Jaskier strokes his hands over his white hair and shushes him, marvelling. He should have known that as soon as Geralt had something he dared to hold, he wouldn’t let it go. He should have known he was loved. They both should have.

Geralt isn’t running now. Jaskier isn’t either.  
  
“I’m sorry,” says Geralt, muffled against Jaskier’s skin. “I love you.”  
  
“I love you too,” Jaskier says.  
  
“I love you,” Geralt repeats. “I’m sorry.”  
  
Jaskier breathes in, and out. He smiles.

“It’s okay,” he says, and it is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dandelion - happiness, loyalty  
> Pansies - thoughts  
> Pink camellia - longing  
> Carnation - Depending on color, I cannot be with you, my heart breaks, I will never forget you  
> Yellow rose - infidelity  
> Blue violet - love, faithfulness  
> Jonquil - desire, wishing for a return of affection  
> Love-lies-bleeding/velvet flower - sickness, hopelessness  
> Columbine - folly, I cannot give you up  
> Heliotrope - devotion  
> Myrtle - love and joy  
> Red rose - true love  
> Marigold - grief


	2. Epilogue

“As a matter of fact, I have a new song for you ladies,” Jaskier announces to the gaggle of tittering wenches. “A Jaskier original.” He strums an opening chord on his lute and strikes an appropriately tragic pose. “The Ballad of the Dandelions.”

He’s played it once or twice by now, always to great reception, but he’s still tweaking it. There are too many tragedies in the hanahaki genre, he thinks -- the world deserves a good one this time around. 

Besides, he’s adding to the musical legacy of both the great Jaskier and the White Wolf of Rivia. Have to get the finishing touches right.

_His final song a song of love, too weak to make it heard --_

_Red petals dripped from bleeding lips, and truth from every word…_

The women in the audience sigh at the romance of it all, but Jaskier sees nothing but the patron currently pushing open the tavern door. Geralt’s eyes land on him immediately, and he smiles. Smiles! Not so long ago Jaskier would not have believed it possible. But a Geralt who can admit he is in love turns out to have a well drilled down to those hidden depths of his, and things Jaskier has only been able to guess at in years of friendship have come bubbling to the surface.

Geralt, he has been discovering, has a heart that has been waiting to love someone for a very long time. What luck, then, that it gets to be Jaskier.

The inn cheers and applauds when the song is over, and Jaskier begs off for an intermission and an ale. It isn’t the bar he heads to, however.

“Ghouls dispatched?” he asks as he sits down at the table, and Geralt nods.   
  
“Quick work,” he says, and lifts something from beneath the table.

It is a bouquet of wildflowers. Nothing in Geralt’s hand has ever grown in a hothouse, just a fistful of raggedy colors sprinkling pollen onto his leather gauntlet. Jaskier doesn’t know the name of a single one of them. It is beautiful.  
  
He thinks maybe it is hard for Geralt to see him with flowers, sometimes; he thinks the bouquets are maybe Geralt’s attempt to overcome that, to replace the images in his head of a slow death with something else. Jaskier takes the flowers, and helps by lifting them to his nose to complete the picture. He inhales their grassy perfume, the same scent of sun and outdoors that lingers always on Geralt’s skin. Jaskier imagines him crossing through a field after the job, gathering the flowers carefully, stem by stem in the evening light, and he smiles.

“You added some lines to the song,” Geralt observes.

"Well, I wasn’t in the state to notice,” Jaskier says, “and your first hand account is useless, but I feel _certain_ the motherly innkeeper was weeping as you bore me up to bed.”   
  
“I don’t recall her as particularly motherly,” Geralt muses. 

“She definitely was. She saw in me a son, and wept at the paleness of my countenance and my terrible fate. I’m thinking of swapping out the red roses for honeysuckle.”   
  
“Why?” says Geralt, the small frown that started at ‘terrible fate’ momentarily arrested. “It was roses.”

“They’re so _cliché,_ ” Jaskier sighs. “Red _roses_. It’s embarrassing. Plus, honeysuckle means both affection and fate, depending on variety. It has nuance.” 

Geralt is smiling again.

“Yes, but red roses mean love,” he points out. “Even I know that one.”

“Honeysuckles can mean love too,” Jaskier grumbles, and is more embarrassed by the flush he can feel in his ears than the smirk on Geralt’s face. “Have you ordered any supper yet?”

“Not yet,” Geralt says “Little busy with a batch of ghouls. Sort of figured you’d order supper.”  
  
“I’ve been busy _earning_ us our supper, thank you,” Jaskier fires back, “so that we can save your ghoul money for supplies, mister quick-work.”

Geralt raises himself from his chair, and brushes dust from his armor.   
  
“I’ll go order, then,” he says. “You have time for a song or two more while we wait and I collect the payment the alderman left.” He levels a look that flips Jaskier’s heart like a flapjack. “You should include your finale, too,” he says. “Since after dinner I intend to call it an early night.” Jaskier grins. 

“Noted,” he says. “Very noted. One finale coming up.” He jumps up from his chair too, and nestles the bouquet in his ale cup. One flower he pulls out of the bunch, a little lacy blue one, which he tucks behind his own ear. He winks. Geralt rolls his eyes.

“Ready for another one, ladies?” Jaskier says, bounding up to them again, lute in hand. “Alas, our time together is coming to an end, but I’ve saved some of my best work for last…”


End file.
